Month of Love, Day 10, late, sorry
Sorry about posting this so late. I kinda forgot and feel like a complete ass. Anyway slightly angsty fic ahead.
Title: Like Sunshine After Rain
Rating: PG - 13 for mentions of violence and sex.
Disclaimer: Not Mine.
Characters/Pairing: Daniel/Vala
Summary: Vala and her complicated history, especially concerning love.
Warning: I started writing this when the challenge first came up, but because I was an idiot and forgot and therefor finished it in the past hour, it is unbetaed it is merely spell checked so, my deepest apologies. The title is a reference to Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, and the line “Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.”
"Did you love me?"
The question is unexpected. She thought they had gone over their relationship, ended their relationship, in her quarters over a year ago now.
She turns and looks at her ex-husband. He was not the first man she married without love, but he was the first husband she'd ever considered as such. There had been nights when she had closed her eyes and it wasn't a rescue filled with buff archaeologists she dreamed of but instead contentment. If he was simply Tomin without the Ori, or perhaps she was simply Vala without the knowledge of what the Ori really were and it was on those nights she thought she'd name the child after her mother.
He has changed since being the man, the husband, who both saved and abandoned her in equal parts. He is a leader of his people now. His self-knowledge, knowing what he did was wrong, but that his belief was merely misplaced. Placed in powers and people as fickle and selfish as any of them, when they should've been solely in the lessons that taught against that. He healed better than she did, she thinks.
He looks at her expectantly but with no desire to rush her, she missed this after he discovered her betrayal, his sweetness, his patience, and his goodness. She could never be truly happy with him, maybe in one of Sam's parallel universes, but here there is too much between them. There are days without food or water or shelter, there is a blow, there is Daniel, and Qetesh and years of being something less than morally respectable, but maybe, there is a version of them so different only two facts remain the same: the fact that he was good, and that she wanted to be. Perhaps they're happy there with a child named after her mother.
"Yes."
(When she was young, before she was taken as a host, there was a boy. They would often sneak out to the woods and kiss and feel what they could with their oppressive clothing still on. One night he whispered into her hair. "I'll marry you and take you away from that witch." She had turned then looked up into his dark eyes, and believed him.
He was the butcher's son. He always smelt like freshly cut meat and blood. It never bothered her.)
"Hey."
"Hey."
"You doin' okay princess?"
Vala turned to look at her CO, her smile was tight. "He's an hour overdue."
"We've been far later for most of our check ins." Cameron said sinking into one of the large chairs around the conference table in the briefing room.
"That's what worries me."
Cameron looked up to the newest member of his team. The dryness in her tone takes him aback. Sitting on the table, one leg swinging back and forth, and part of a pigtail curled around a finger she was the picture of a little child, except for the expression on her face. She was staring straight ahead at the gate below them, wishing the chevrons to start lighting and the iris to start closing. It remained silent and still despite her unwavering gaze.
"He'll come back Princess, he knows by now he can't get away from you. You're just too damned determined."
She smiled again at him, this time, despite its small breadth it was genuine. "Thanks Cam."
"Not a problem." He rose. He pated her shoulder, and after a moment's hesitation bent and placed a kiss on her forehead. "I promise Vala," He said softly, "He'll come back, and if he doesn't, well, we'll go get him."
She squeezes his hand in thanks.
(One of her first long cons involves a marriage. The marks name is Lian. He loves her. It is easy to make people love her. It is easy to see what they want and become that. It is her father's plan, and when Jack comes to visit her the night before and tries to delicately explain about the wedding night in his rambling way she cuts him off at the pass. "I was host to a sex goddess father." She thinks Jack’s face darkens for a moment, but she passes it off as a foolish desire on her part.
The next night as Lian moves over her gently trying not to hurt her she feels tears come into her eyes as she knows this is the first, not the last time, she will be used like this or use those in her turn.)
She sits with the rest of SG-1 they're crammed around a table that is slightly too small for their number, and she's squished between Cameron and Samantha. The bar is loud, and there are people who live their life day to day, without any knowledge of what they do, without any knowledge of what is out there. She remembers how hard it was for her to understand that in the beginning, she had talked about it to Teal'c. Sure, they may have believed in false gods, but these people didn't even know other planets existed, didn't even know the kind of power that hovered all around them, even as a child before she first stepped through the "gate" as the Taur'i called it, it was a huge part of her life, and stepping into the blue light was exciting the first time but was routine by the time she had hit puberty.
"Hey, princess."
She's called back from her musings by Cam's call. "Sorry," She smiles her big, everything is okay smile. "Wandering thoughts." She tries to raise her hands to illustrate her point, but finds them ostensibly trapped by her teammates sitting at her sides. She suddenly feels stifled. "I think I need a breath of fresh air." She smiles and Samantha asks if she wants company but she smiles and declines and walks away quickly.
Outside she leans against the wall of the bar and looks up at the stars. There aren't that many visible, the city, though not as bright as others, is still light enough to separate her from seeing most of the white specks above. The feeling from inside comes back. She feels so hideously trapped in that moment, that she has to turn herself around and place steadying hand against the dirty brick wall before spilling her guts over the pavement below. As she comes back to herself, her stomach empty, she becomes aware of a hand stroking her back. She looks over her shoulder.
Daniel smiled at her weakly, the crinkle in his brow betraying his confusion.
"Thank you." She whispers softly.
"I didn't think alcohol could affect you like that." He says softly, gently pulling her towards him, and away from the wall she's been sick on.
She looks down, her hands playing with the cuff of her shirt. "That's because it wasn't the alcohol." She looks up at him, her mouth twisted into a wry grin that breaks something inside him. He hates seeing her like this, so utterly broken, and he's just sitting on the outside unable to put her back together.
She steps back from the half embrace he holds her in. "I'm just going to go to the bathroom." She smiles on of her fake ones. "You know mouth, yuck." She says, her words slightly too fast, her hands rising to illustrate the point, playing along with the pretense she is trying so hard to put back up.
He catches her arm before she can get too far away. "What's wrong?"
She sighs. She knows Daniel won't let this go, she will either spill or they will get into one of their bad fights where they won't speak for days and she can't deal with that right now. She looked up at him. "Daniel, this is my home now, I know that, but sometimes..." She looks down again, her tongue darting out to lick her lips.
"Sometimes?" He pushes; grabbing her clasped hands he threads his fingers through hers.
"Sometimes I feel very claustrophobic. I try not to think of it as being stuck, but at times..."
"You want to run again."
"No." She shakes her head in rejection of the theory. "I want to be free." She looks up at Daniel, and then continues looking past him, looking into the sky. "I'm used to being there Daniel. Sometimes, with all of these people who have no idea, who don't get it, and a 'gate that's protected and regulated, it feels very, very isolated." She looks back down to him. "Sometimes I get scared is all."
He doesn't know what to say to that. He can tell her she has a home, she'll be safe, they love her, but even he knows that won't satisfy her.
She pulls her hand from his and turns to go back in.
"Vala." He calls after her.
She keeps walking.
(She remembers when she first started stealing ships she ran into a girl. Vala was trying to steal her ship, and the girl defiantly told her nothing at first, halfway through decoding the main frame with a soft voice the girl had said: "I'll tell you the codes if you take me with you." Vala was going to turn down this offer, after all half-way through, but as she turned around and saw the girl's expression, a mixture of fear, defiance, and that first taste of freedom beginning to burn within her soul, without her brains permission her mouth said: "Okay.")
"So Vala, what's with you and Danny boy?"
Vala turns to him quickly, she is taken obviously taken off-guard and it is one of the few times Jack has ever seen her without layers of armor in place. "Uhm..."
Jack smiled. The space pirate loved the space monkey.
(One of her first memories is of her brother. He was four years younger than her, just a baby in the memory. Her mother had gone outside just for a moment, and the baby looked like it was about to roll of the edge of the bed. The little dark haired girl had gone up to him, pushed him further back onto the bed, and then struggled with climbing the bed herself. Sitting next to the newborn, she had looked down into his big blue eyes and said: "You're my baby brother." The baby blinked slowly. The little girl pouted expecting something more. She heard her mother come inside and begin coming towards them, so she leaned down quickly and said: "I love you."
She didn't know quite what those words meant then. Knew she said it to her mother and father and they said it back. She knew though, that if anyone wanted the baby, they'd have to get through her.
They did.)
"Vala."
"Yes Daniel, darling."
"What, exactly, are you doing?"
Vala didn't need to look up to know his eyes were scrunched together and his forehead was creasing. Vala smirked. She had, after several glasses of wine with Sam and too many action films in which the hero always got the girl, decided that she was going to love Daniel, if it killed her, or him. She was going to love him, he was going to love her, and they were going to be happy false gods damn it. "I am doing what you wanted me to do, translating this back log of Go'auld, as you translate that," and here she thought she was working excellently, she gestured vaguely at the pile of Ancient manuscripts without looking up in a manner that he was all to familiar with giving to her, "Pile of Ancient backlog." Finally she looked up tossing her hair over her shoulder with a practiced nonchalance, "No pun intended." Her smile was less, scary, than normal, and her she seemed... calm.
"Yeah, you never do what I say Vala."
"I'm turning over a new page in my life." She resisted literally turning of a sheet of the papers she was working on.
He saw her fingers twitch toward the corner of the papers in front of her and he nearly sighed in relief. Vala was in there. He'd just have to wait her out. "Well then good work."
They smiled at each other and despite the pretense of them, the smiles were genuine.
(After trying to steal the Prometheus things stopped going right for Vala Mal Doran. She was a good con-woman, a good thief, and an excellent liar. Something about that Tau'ri and his naivety shining through his cynicism got to her. Somewhere between barely getting away with her life from those "Earth" creatures and stumbling across the stones with those odd markings and a promise Daniel Jackson had wormed himself into her deeper than any of the men she'd been married to.)
She turned over in bed and looked at him. She thought that she likes him like this the most. It wasn't that he looked peaceful or relaxed. It was that she's here with him, and there's no fear he'll kick her out when he opens his eyes slowly and looks at her.
She kissed his shoulder gently. He curled into her and trapped her a little. She contemplated the gentle approach for another second before punching him in the arm.
His eyes open quicker than normal, and a frown forms on his face almost immediately.
"Vala-"
"Daniel, shut up. There's something I need to tell you."
(She has said "I love you" more times than even one of Sam's doohickey's could remember. Other than to her mother she's only been telling the truth 5 times to three men. She never didn't mean it though. Saying you love someone is the most delicate and powerful tool of the con. Just because she didn't feel the words never meant she didn't believe in them. Their power, she believed, could bring whole intergalactic empires.
She doesn't know they have.)
Title: Like Sunshine After Rain
Rating: PG - 13 for mentions of violence and sex.
Disclaimer: Not Mine.
Characters/Pairing: Daniel/Vala
Summary: Vala and her complicated history, especially concerning love.
Warning: I started writing this when the challenge first came up, but because I was an idiot and forgot and therefor finished it in the past hour, it is unbetaed it is merely spell checked so, my deepest apologies. The title is a reference to Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, and the line “Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.”
"Did you love me?"
The question is unexpected. She thought they had gone over their relationship, ended their relationship, in her quarters over a year ago now.
She turns and looks at her ex-husband. He was not the first man she married without love, but he was the first husband she'd ever considered as such. There had been nights when she had closed her eyes and it wasn't a rescue filled with buff archaeologists she dreamed of but instead contentment. If he was simply Tomin without the Ori, or perhaps she was simply Vala without the knowledge of what the Ori really were and it was on those nights she thought she'd name the child after her mother.
He has changed since being the man, the husband, who both saved and abandoned her in equal parts. He is a leader of his people now. His self-knowledge, knowing what he did was wrong, but that his belief was merely misplaced. Placed in powers and people as fickle and selfish as any of them, when they should've been solely in the lessons that taught against that. He healed better than she did, she thinks.
He looks at her expectantly but with no desire to rush her, she missed this after he discovered her betrayal, his sweetness, his patience, and his goodness. She could never be truly happy with him, maybe in one of Sam's parallel universes, but here there is too much between them. There are days without food or water or shelter, there is a blow, there is Daniel, and Qetesh and years of being something less than morally respectable, but maybe, there is a version of them so different only two facts remain the same: the fact that he was good, and that she wanted to be. Perhaps they're happy there with a child named after her mother.
"Yes."
(When she was young, before she was taken as a host, there was a boy. They would often sneak out to the woods and kiss and feel what they could with their oppressive clothing still on. One night he whispered into her hair. "I'll marry you and take you away from that witch." She had turned then looked up into his dark eyes, and believed him.
He was the butcher's son. He always smelt like freshly cut meat and blood. It never bothered her.)
"Hey."
"Hey."
"You doin' okay princess?"
Vala turned to look at her CO, her smile was tight. "He's an hour overdue."
"We've been far later for most of our check ins." Cameron said sinking into one of the large chairs around the conference table in the briefing room.
"That's what worries me."
Cameron looked up to the newest member of his team. The dryness in her tone takes him aback. Sitting on the table, one leg swinging back and forth, and part of a pigtail curled around a finger she was the picture of a little child, except for the expression on her face. She was staring straight ahead at the gate below them, wishing the chevrons to start lighting and the iris to start closing. It remained silent and still despite her unwavering gaze.
"He'll come back Princess, he knows by now he can't get away from you. You're just too damned determined."
She smiled again at him, this time, despite its small breadth it was genuine. "Thanks Cam."
"Not a problem." He rose. He pated her shoulder, and after a moment's hesitation bent and placed a kiss on her forehead. "I promise Vala," He said softly, "He'll come back, and if he doesn't, well, we'll go get him."
She squeezes his hand in thanks.
(One of her first long cons involves a marriage. The marks name is Lian. He loves her. It is easy to make people love her. It is easy to see what they want and become that. It is her father's plan, and when Jack comes to visit her the night before and tries to delicately explain about the wedding night in his rambling way she cuts him off at the pass. "I was host to a sex goddess father." She thinks Jack’s face darkens for a moment, but she passes it off as a foolish desire on her part.
The next night as Lian moves over her gently trying not to hurt her she feels tears come into her eyes as she knows this is the first, not the last time, she will be used like this or use those in her turn.)
She sits with the rest of SG-1 they're crammed around a table that is slightly too small for their number, and she's squished between Cameron and Samantha. The bar is loud, and there are people who live their life day to day, without any knowledge of what they do, without any knowledge of what is out there. She remembers how hard it was for her to understand that in the beginning, she had talked about it to Teal'c. Sure, they may have believed in false gods, but these people didn't even know other planets existed, didn't even know the kind of power that hovered all around them, even as a child before she first stepped through the "gate" as the Taur'i called it, it was a huge part of her life, and stepping into the blue light was exciting the first time but was routine by the time she had hit puberty.
"Hey, princess."
She's called back from her musings by Cam's call. "Sorry," She smiles her big, everything is okay smile. "Wandering thoughts." She tries to raise her hands to illustrate her point, but finds them ostensibly trapped by her teammates sitting at her sides. She suddenly feels stifled. "I think I need a breath of fresh air." She smiles and Samantha asks if she wants company but she smiles and declines and walks away quickly.
Outside she leans against the wall of the bar and looks up at the stars. There aren't that many visible, the city, though not as bright as others, is still light enough to separate her from seeing most of the white specks above. The feeling from inside comes back. She feels so hideously trapped in that moment, that she has to turn herself around and place steadying hand against the dirty brick wall before spilling her guts over the pavement below. As she comes back to herself, her stomach empty, she becomes aware of a hand stroking her back. She looks over her shoulder.
Daniel smiled at her weakly, the crinkle in his brow betraying his confusion.
"Thank you." She whispers softly.
"I didn't think alcohol could affect you like that." He says softly, gently pulling her towards him, and away from the wall she's been sick on.
She looks down, her hands playing with the cuff of her shirt. "That's because it wasn't the alcohol." She looks up at him, her mouth twisted into a wry grin that breaks something inside him. He hates seeing her like this, so utterly broken, and he's just sitting on the outside unable to put her back together.
She steps back from the half embrace he holds her in. "I'm just going to go to the bathroom." She smiles on of her fake ones. "You know mouth, yuck." She says, her words slightly too fast, her hands rising to illustrate the point, playing along with the pretense she is trying so hard to put back up.
He catches her arm before she can get too far away. "What's wrong?"
She sighs. She knows Daniel won't let this go, she will either spill or they will get into one of their bad fights where they won't speak for days and she can't deal with that right now. She looked up at him. "Daniel, this is my home now, I know that, but sometimes..." She looks down again, her tongue darting out to lick her lips.
"Sometimes?" He pushes; grabbing her clasped hands he threads his fingers through hers.
"Sometimes I feel very claustrophobic. I try not to think of it as being stuck, but at times..."
"You want to run again."
"No." She shakes her head in rejection of the theory. "I want to be free." She looks up at Daniel, and then continues looking past him, looking into the sky. "I'm used to being there Daniel. Sometimes, with all of these people who have no idea, who don't get it, and a 'gate that's protected and regulated, it feels very, very isolated." She looks back down to him. "Sometimes I get scared is all."
He doesn't know what to say to that. He can tell her she has a home, she'll be safe, they love her, but even he knows that won't satisfy her.
She pulls her hand from his and turns to go back in.
"Vala." He calls after her.
She keeps walking.
(She remembers when she first started stealing ships she ran into a girl. Vala was trying to steal her ship, and the girl defiantly told her nothing at first, halfway through decoding the main frame with a soft voice the girl had said: "I'll tell you the codes if you take me with you." Vala was going to turn down this offer, after all half-way through, but as she turned around and saw the girl's expression, a mixture of fear, defiance, and that first taste of freedom beginning to burn within her soul, without her brains permission her mouth said: "Okay.")
"So Vala, what's with you and Danny boy?"
Vala turns to him quickly, she is taken obviously taken off-guard and it is one of the few times Jack has ever seen her without layers of armor in place. "Uhm..."
Jack smiled. The space pirate loved the space monkey.
(One of her first memories is of her brother. He was four years younger than her, just a baby in the memory. Her mother had gone outside just for a moment, and the baby looked like it was about to roll of the edge of the bed. The little dark haired girl had gone up to him, pushed him further back onto the bed, and then struggled with climbing the bed herself. Sitting next to the newborn, she had looked down into his big blue eyes and said: "You're my baby brother." The baby blinked slowly. The little girl pouted expecting something more. She heard her mother come inside and begin coming towards them, so she leaned down quickly and said: "I love you."
She didn't know quite what those words meant then. Knew she said it to her mother and father and they said it back. She knew though, that if anyone wanted the baby, they'd have to get through her.
They did.)
"Vala."
"Yes Daniel, darling."
"What, exactly, are you doing?"
Vala didn't need to look up to know his eyes were scrunched together and his forehead was creasing. Vala smirked. She had, after several glasses of wine with Sam and too many action films in which the hero always got the girl, decided that she was going to love Daniel, if it killed her, or him. She was going to love him, he was going to love her, and they were going to be happy false gods damn it. "I am doing what you wanted me to do, translating this back log of Go'auld, as you translate that," and here she thought she was working excellently, she gestured vaguely at the pile of Ancient manuscripts without looking up in a manner that he was all to familiar with giving to her, "Pile of Ancient backlog." Finally she looked up tossing her hair over her shoulder with a practiced nonchalance, "No pun intended." Her smile was less, scary, than normal, and her she seemed... calm.
"Yeah, you never do what I say Vala."
"I'm turning over a new page in my life." She resisted literally turning of a sheet of the papers she was working on.
He saw her fingers twitch toward the corner of the papers in front of her and he nearly sighed in relief. Vala was in there. He'd just have to wait her out. "Well then good work."
They smiled at each other and despite the pretense of them, the smiles were genuine.
(After trying to steal the Prometheus things stopped going right for Vala Mal Doran. She was a good con-woman, a good thief, and an excellent liar. Something about that Tau'ri and his naivety shining through his cynicism got to her. Somewhere between barely getting away with her life from those "Earth" creatures and stumbling across the stones with those odd markings and a promise Daniel Jackson had wormed himself into her deeper than any of the men she'd been married to.)
She turned over in bed and looked at him. She thought that she likes him like this the most. It wasn't that he looked peaceful or relaxed. It was that she's here with him, and there's no fear he'll kick her out when he opens his eyes slowly and looks at her.
She kissed his shoulder gently. He curled into her and trapped her a little. She contemplated the gentle approach for another second before punching him in the arm.
His eyes open quicker than normal, and a frown forms on his face almost immediately.
"Vala-"
"Daniel, shut up. There's something I need to tell you."
(She has said "I love you" more times than even one of Sam's doohickey's could remember. Other than to her mother she's only been telling the truth 5 times to three men. She never didn't mean it though. Saying you love someone is the most delicate and powerful tool of the con. Just because she didn't feel the words never meant she didn't believe in them. Their power, she believed, could bring whole intergalactic empires.
She doesn't know they have.)